


Addict & Convict (The Pancakes and Postcards Remix)

by bocje_ce_ustu



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 04:31:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11305737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: Charles. He has imagined how the name would roll out on his tongue, cherished just as in the old times, when it alone would elicit a shiver. It would sound a bit rough on the edges, choked on breathless surprise. It would sound like everything Erik needs to get through – his pain, his guilt, his longing, his hope for forgiveness.Instead his lips settle for that line he would once have deemed too stiff, and he smiles the smile of a criminal who shot his lover in the back and shows up ten years later to cook him breakfast.





	Addict & Convict (The Pancakes and Postcards Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TurtleTotem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Addict & Convict](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968648) by [TurtleTotem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem). 



Ten years, and still Erik can play the scene in his head in fucking technicolor.

A rustle from the bank clients rounded up against the counter, the click of a safety lock – a gun Erik had missed.

His senses latching onto it with a surety only fear and anger ever managed to fuel, propelling the gun to the far wall in a crash and scattering of warped pieces.

Raven’s feral grin, security guard cap tipped back on her new fake face.

A round of warning shots, with bullets ricocheting in a flourish of light and metal.

(It seemed like a good idea at the time. No one needed to get hurt.)

And then the scream.

In truth, there had been screams, blending together in a shrieking cacophony, but only one mattered to Erik.

He’s had plenty of time to review every instant of the scene, to go through it thousands of times and see where the point of no return was, and he has learnt to appreciate the irony of that exact moment.

Charles had always been the one finding him. He was the soft, clear whisper to his ear in a swarming crowd, the sunlight piercing through murky waves.

This time, Erik found him first; the raw, ugly cry of pain guiding his eyes through the trembling pile of people huddling on the floor. To the man he had left drooling contentedly on his pillow that very morning, now lying in a dark crimson pool spreading fast. Too fast.

He barely suppressed the urge to run to Charles, heist be damned. His hands almost reached for the antipsionic mask in the sudden need to feel Charles in his mind, to shoulder his pain, to apologize. In the corner of his eye Raven was fighting a similar battle, ripples of blue lapping at the heel of her newly acquired meaty hands.

But it wasn’t about him, or Raven, for that matter. His team had to get out of there. Taking off their masks now would be suicide.

Also, a part of him reasoned, he needed to be there for Charles. If they were caught, Charles would be alone.

If they were caught, Charles would know, and he would never forgive Erik.

But, in the end, Erik realized he had long made that decision.

In the next few moments Charles was being turned on his stomach by someone attempting to stop the blood oozing from his lower back, and in a last, painful effort not to lose consciousness, Charles’ eyes drifted up to Erik and widened.

 

***

 

He’s always thought Raven would be the one to break him out, if anyone was ever going to, so when he finds himself face to face with two scruffy punks with a familiar glint in their eye, he can’t help but wonder if this is going to be more trouble than help in the end.

However, the role of the exemplar father has never suited him, so the guilt of knowing the twins involved in his escape soon dissolves into a far less judicious, but no less parental pride. They would make wonderful robbers, his children.

The boy is fast – faster than thought, faster than bullets. The girl has a way of opening doors that even Charles would envy. Charles... Erik knows he shouldn’t allow himself to think about Charles, but he does anyway. Pain is an old friend Erik can’t seem to shut his door to.

“How did you know where to find me?” he asks eventually, in the relative safety of a stolen car eating miles towards the twins’ home.

“We always knew you were in prison,” Pietro says, easy as discussing pizza toppings. “But yesterday we knew where exactly.”

“And he was bored,” Wanda points out.

“You were too.”

“I was annoyed by you being bored, that’s different.”

“How did you know?” Erik says once more, because the Magda he knows has always been keen on visiting alone – if she visited at all. (And surely enough, others never did.)

“Blue guy with a serious body hair problem.”

_Beast_ , Erik reckons. Well, this is unexpected. He had almost succeeded in erasing the memory of the guy, and he had been just as certain that his feelings were returned. So why him, and why know? What changed?

Wanda seems to pick up on his surprise. “He looked like he really needed you out, but wouldn’t do it himself at gunpoint.”

So he thinks he can let Erik’s children take the risk in his stead. No matter how much time passes by, Hank McCoy still finds ways to piss him off.

And yet if Beast needs Erik out, but doesn’t want him out, it can only really mean one thing.

Pain greets him once again.

 

***

 

Erik is all too sorry to be so soon on his children’s porch, their mother glaring daggers at the three of them in turns.

Magda’s power has always been to be right about things, and not being afraid of calling bullshit when she sees it. Unfortunately for Erik, that means she’s always been right about him too.

But he is indeed supposed to be the adult here, so he figures he must be the one making amends.

“I’m so sorry, Magda. I didn’t know—”

“Don’t,” she says, curt. “I can see you gloating.”

Erik can indeed feel the corners of his lips tugging upwards in spite of his efforts to look properly contrite, as the occasion requires.

She shakes her head in resignation. “But I also should have seen this coming.” Her gaze descends once again on their children, not warmer than November hail. “One quiet week? You were up to something after all.”

“You needn’t worry.” To his credit, Pietro sounds dangerously sincere for a teenager who has just broken his estranged father out of prison. “No one saw us.”

“And even if they did,” Wanda adds in a low murmur “I would like to see them prove it.” She flashes Erik a sharp, unrepentant grin that has her own brother shudder.

“Can he stay for dinner?” Pietro asks, pointedly not looking at the two of them comparing all-teeth smiles.

“No,” Madga and Erik burst out in unison, but only Erik seems to find it funny. Magda is too busy boring holes through his skull right now to care. “They might have missed you on your way out, but they can still trace you back here.” Erik is already nodding when she adds, “You have to go.”

He ruffles the twins’ hair and walks away under their solemnly disappointed stare.

 

***

 

He doesn’t really know what he expected to see when he first floated to Charles’ window and peered in.

He only knows not ten, not even twenty-five years could have prepared him for this sight. Charles lying in a sprawl on the floor between the bed and the glistening frame of the wheelchair. The room smells of something rotten and cheap liquor, every surface a battlefield of litter. The alarm blinks an exasperated series of zeroes on the night table, next to where Erik remembers their photo in the steel frame being, a lifetime ago, and where now a haphazard pile of colorful postcards lies, every last one of them turned to show the back covered in round, cheerful letters and empty words.

Charles stirs, and for a moment Erik freezes in place, his feet inches from the floor. Then he floats back outside, carefully dodging any obstacle on his way.

 

***

 

A cheerfully vague “Good to see you, old friend” is what comes out of his mouth after the words he has been carefully rehearsing in his head for the last half hour fly out of the window at the sight of Charles wheeling into the kitchen.

_Charles._ He has imagined how the name would roll out on his tongue, cherished just as in the old times, when it alone would elicit a shiver. It would sound a bit rough on the edges, choked on breathless surprise. It would sound like everything Erik needs to get through – his pain, his guilt, his longing, his hope for forgiveness.

Instead his lips settle for that line he would once have deemed too stiff, and he smiles the smile of a criminal who shot his lover in the back and shows up ten years later to cook him breakfast.

Any plan he may have had for his next words gets drowned into a loud ramble Charles pours directly into his brain without even noticing.

_Then_ Charles notices. Erik almost feels the handcuffs heat up under his gaze.

When Charles speaks again, it’s with such an effort at plain indifference that it makes it all the more agonizing to listen.

“In the eventuality I wanted an explanation – which, rest assured, I don’t – I assume I wouldn’t be getting one, would I?”

“You assume right,” Erik replies, keeping his eyes on pancake and pan because this is not the best time to reveal that his children were instrumental in his sudden release. Anyhow, if Charles really wants to know, he will, whether Erik likes it or not. There are no masks between them this time.

“What makes you think I’m not going to turn you over this time?” Erik doesn’t know if it’s more painful to hear these words and this tone in Charles’ once loving voice, or to know he is the one who put them there. He only knows he is soon going to change that. “I’m a very different man now.”

“I’m not.” Erik is almost proud at how the words sound breezy, and adds a flourish of the spatula for good measure. “Which is why you’re coming with me.”

“Why, a kidnapping, Erik?” Charles sneers, his arms spreading as if to encompass the entirety of the utter mess the mansion has become. “I’m afraid you’re ten years late for that. Good luck finding someone willing to pay the ransom now.”

“I’m pretty sure we can manage to find someone.”

“On the moon, maybe.”

Erik picks up from the counter the postcard he collected on his way in and flicks it up towards Charles. This one has gaudy kiss marks all over a shining Tour Eiffel.

“I was thinking Paris.”

This time, when Charles’ eyes widen, it hurts only in the best of ways.

 

 


End file.
